Sunday, June 20, 2010

Happy Dad's Day

This year is an extra cause for celebration because Shawn is going to be a grandfather, Cody is about to be a dad and I am once again speaking to my mom and step dad.

To honour the dad's in our family, we are heading over to the folks house for a bbq. Of course Shawn's dad will be there, but his cousin Atti from Hungary is here for a visit as well. We (the girls and I) have never met him, Shawn hasn't seen him since the 90's. I am nervous, but this should be fun.

My own Dad is not here - he passed away almost 11 years ago. I miss him, so, so, much, but I know that he is in a better place. No more pain, no struggles...

I choose to celebrate the fact that he was a womderful Dad, my best friend.

4 comments:

Congratulations that you are going to have a grandchild. A new tiny one to cuddle, that is so exciting! And being a young grandmother is such a bonus I think.

I found your blog through clicking on the next blog link from something else, sometimes do that just to see what random things come up but yours kind of drew me in and before I knew it I was reading your story!

Good luck to Shawn with his pain management, I feel for you both there as I have long term pain management treatment myself. I really hope he gets some benefit, but if not I am sure there are more things can be tried.

Peter - Shawn thanks you :) We had a nice dinner, and Shawn got lots of gifts from the kids - a new weed wacker, t shirt, candy (he loves candy), stuff like that. Plus, the girls and I all of the cleaning. All that he had to do was play with his new weed wacker.

Lucy - Hi. Thanks for stopping by :) I am beyond excited about the new grandbaby (not that there is an old one)

What kind of long term pain management treatment have you had - if you don't mind me asking? So far, this has been nightmarish for Shawn, but he is still hanging in and hoping for the best.

Hi there. I don't mind you asking at all, but I don't want to bore or depress you. Still, at risk of doing both...

I have been treated for pain in multiple joints/muscles, is probably the simplest way to put it. I have learnt that in terms of meds the doctors see painkillers in a kind of hierarchy, 1. they tell you to take the full daily dose of paracetamol and ibuprofen . If you keep complaining then 2. they tell you to take the full daily dose of ibuprofen or some similar prescription anti-inflammatory, combined with another painkiller that might be codeine or a mix of codeine and paracetamol. Ie. you can mix anti inflammatory ones with paracetamol/codeine ones. I did all that but it didn't really work, plus you have to take stomach pills with it to stop side effects from the ibuprofen.They have a range of stronger painkillers, not anti-inflam., going up from codeine through various ones I won't bother to name because I am in the UK so the names will be different, to morphine. I got put on a patch which you wear on your arm all the time and which releases like a morphine based thing - it seemed to work really well but unfortunately tolerating them is hard and it affected my breathing too badly for me to keep on with it. But there are a variety of those patches and they did say you can be ok with one and not another so I may try another.

I haven't done so far because they decided to start me down a route of using non traditional painkillers, depending on the nature of Shawn's problem these may be good for him. Some are things like amitryptiline (I may have spelt that wrong, it is an old fashioned anti depressant) but I have not heard great reports of it as a painkiller some people do use it. The one they put me on is Pregabalin, which is an anti convulsant. A similar anti convulsant is called Gabapentin. These have been used by epileptics to stop convulsions but recently they have found they also help people with pain by calming nerve reactions - they can help with pain from nerve damage through shingles, diabetes, or from arthritis or fibromyalgia, or migraines etc. You can combine them with other painkillers but I wouldn't combine them with patches, you'd be too out of it. So it could be worth asking about these alternative drugs.

I also found that sleeping tablets help the pain sometimes, if you do find this and they don't make you too sleepy you can take them early and get some jobs done!

This is so long, I am sorry but I didn't know what info you wanted. I have also used a tens machine, that is ok but only works when you have it on. I tried acupuncture, didn't work for me but then I was terrified!

I also went on a pain management course which luckily the NHS offered though it might stop that now the UK is officially broke! They taught me some really useful basic exercises and advice on how to pace yourself in activities, and how to build up strength - you have to do it all differently when you have chronic pain because your body reacts differently. I could summarise what they said if you like as it might help. I won't do it now as i think I've gone on enough, but, if you want me to I'd be happy to.

Sorry if this wasn't the kind of info you needed, but let me know if i can help - there were people on the course with a wide range of issues and causes of pain so I picked up a bit of knowledge.